Article

(1) When you think about it, life is a series of ongoing, connecting trips

(2) Many of us start the day by commuting, or traveling, to work. We drop off our children at school. We may visit the doctor or go to the market to buy food. We rush home to see our families.

(3) Life is more pleasant when these trips are easy and direct. The easier commuting, the higher your quality of life is.

(4) Being stuck in traffic is not easy or direct. Traffic delays can be stressful. They bring out the worst in some people. Traffic delays also reduce your quality of life. And some areas are worse than others. Three of the ten worst cities for traffic are in Southeast Asia.

(5) People who live in big cities spend a lot of time talking about traffic. Too many people on the roads can be a big problem.

(6) Not all traffic is the same. There are some terms you need to know when talking about traffic.

(7) One such term is gridlock. Gridlock is when nobody can go anywhere. The roads become one big parking lot.

(8) There is also stop-and-start traffic. This is when you move forward a little, but then stop. Move a little. Then stop. Both are equally stressful.

(9) Traffic can be bumper-to-bumper. This means there are so many cars on the road that their bumpers seem to be touching. To idle means the engine of your car is running, but you are not moving … anywhere.

(10) Another term to know is rush hour traffic. Rush hour traffic happens at about the same time every day – when people are commuting to and from work.

(11) But who in the world has the worst traffic?

(12) In 2014, the Castrol Magnatec Stop-Start Index examined traffic conditions in 78 cities around the world. Drivers in these areas used TomTom GPS devices. Each device measured the time spent in traffic and the traffic conditions they experienced.

(13) Castrol is an oil company based in the United Kingdom. The company says all this stop-start driving and idling hurts your car engine. And to help, it wants to sell you Castrol products.

(14) The study found an increase in both heavy traffic and stop-and-start driving.

(17) Let us now take a closer look at the city with the worst traffic in the world – Jakarta. Jakarta’s metropolitan area is home to about 24 million people. But only 13 percent of all trips are on public transportation.

(18) Investment in public transport in the Indonesian capital began in 2004. Workers are building the first part of a public transport system, known as the Mass Rapid Transit railway.

(19) Another thing cities can do to limit traffic is to charge money to drive in certain parts of a city. Next year, Jakarta plans to start charging drivers more to travel on two heavily congested roads.

(20) Jakarta officials have also banned motorcycles from the main roads in the city.

(21) Until cities with traffic problems find ways to get people from Point A to Point B more efficiently, they can only envy people in Tampere, Finland and Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. The survey found that these two cities have the fastest moving traffic.

Discussion

*Let’s talk about the article base on the questions below

Have you ever been in a traffic jam? What do you usually do when you are caught in a middle of a traffic jam?

Is parking a problem in your country? (shopping malls, etc) Why?

How could the government discourage people from taking their cars into the city?